Now come out and play: why we built Play New Brighton

This week we gave New Brighton a live train board, then a page for where to eat and drink. You know when your train leaves. You know where to get a coffee and where to get a pint. Which leaves the question everyone asks the moment they step out of the station. So what is there to do?

It's a Saturday in October. The sky can't make its mind up. The kids want the fair, the dog wants the beach, and the forecast says showers by two. Is the tide in or out? Is the fair even open? Is there anything to do if it pours? And how long have you got before the last train home?

New Brighton has never been short of answers. A fort and a lighthouse standing in the sea. A fair, a theatre, a cinema and a bowling alley. Rock pools, parks, a marine lake and miles of prom. More than 40 murals on the walls of the Victoria Quarter. The trouble is that the answers live in a dozen different places. The tide is on one website, the weather on another. Opening times are on Facebook pages and posters. The murals are on a map you have to know exists. For a visitor it's guesswork, and for a family with a car full of kids, guesswork is how a good day goes wrong.

That's not a dig at anyone. Clubs are run by volunteers, attractions by people who are busy running attractions, and the big travel sites have to cover the whole country. Nobody was looking after the whole picture for New Brighton. So we did.

play.hellonewbrighton.com puts everything to do in New Brighton on one page: 59 things, 22 of them free, from the beach and the fair to the rock pools, the murals and the walks along the coast to Leasowe. Every one is a ride ticket, with the price on the stub. Yellow if you pay, sea glass if it's free. Filter by what you're after, or by who's with you: rainy day, kids, free, dogs welcome, accessible.

At the top sits Beach now. The tide comes first, because on the Mersey it matters most: it can come in behind you, even on a calm day. One tap opens today's tide times from ADMIRALTY EasyTide. Next to it are the weather and the wind from the Met Office, sunrise and sunset, whether the lifeguards are on duty and the next train home. When the wind blows off the land, the board tells you to keep the inflatables for the pool. And if you've ever wondered what the red and green buoys in the river mean, there's a little guide to those too.

We've been more careful here than anywhere. We don't print tide times of our own; we send you to the official ones. Lifeguard dates come from the RNLI and never roll forward on a guess. If we don't know something about a place yet, its card says "Details to come" rather than making it up. A board that sends you onto the sand at the wrong time is worse than no board at all.

Then there's the town itself. The OpenAIR Gallery mural trail maps 42 murals by 21 named artists, in a walking order from the top of Victoria Road down to the sea, with a short list to start with if you've only got an hour. Who's on the shore introduces the birds of the river mouth, from the turnstones on the rocks to the storm petrels that autumn gales blow in, and shows you how to go rock pooling round the lighthouse without harming anything you find. There's a beach day kit list, and a photo walk in the footsteps of Martin Parr, Tom Wood and Ken Grant, three photographers who all turned their cameras on New Brighton.

Some of the best things to do here cost nothing at all, and some of the best people doing them are our neighbours. We've been working with HYPE Urban Bikes on Coastal Drive, who'll hire you a bike to ride the prom, and who lend bikes for free on Saturday afternoons through Ride Wirral. On Victoria Road, The Hatch Gallery puts on exhibitions and events right in the middle of the mural trail. Big attractions and small clubs get the same card. No paid placements. No ads. No sign-up. Nobody pays to appear.

The boards are built to work together. Play shows the next train home on the same page as the tide, and when you're hungry it sends you to Enjoy New Brighton for what's open now. Arrive, eat, play, get home safely. That's a whole day out, on three pages that work as one.

We think this is what placemaking looks like at street level. Not another brochure, but the small, useful answers that turn a first visit into a good day, and a good day into a reason to come back. A seaside town lives on that.

If you run something, the board is yours too. Every card has a link to update your listing, whether you're a venue, a club, a class, a group or an event. It comes straight to us, and we check it before anything changes. Some cards still say "Details to come", and you can help us fill them in.

There's more to come. Next on Play, we want to show what's on this week, from gigs to markets. After that, places to stay for the visitors who can't bear to leave, and then the shops.

Until then, the next time someone asks what there is to do in New Brighton, you'll know. Check the tide. Pick a ticket. Come out and play.

And mind your chips.

play.hellonewbrighton.com · free, no ads, no sign-up. Save it to your home screen.

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Play New Brighton is an independent community project by New Brighton Creative Futures CIC. Weather and wind: Powered by Met Office data. Tide times: ADMIRALTY EasyTide. Lifeguard dates: RNLI. Train times come from our live train board, powered by National Rail Enquiries via the Rail Data Marketplace. Mural trail map: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Wildlife notes draw on the RSPB, BTO, the Wildlife Trusts, Natural England and the Natural History Museum. The voice and music in the video were made with Suno.